Sunburn- phoebus apollo

--iv. they visit the demon dude ranch

AFTER BRIARES LEFT THEIR GROUP and Annabeth decided to stop for the day, Rhea fell asleep with her head near Percy's hand in the Labyrinth, but her dreams woke her up in the sun car.

Apollo had one hand on the wheel, the other drumming mindlessly on the dashboard, and he was singing his heart out to a song that Rhea surprisingly didn't know (he'd spent so much time playing her what he thought were the best hits, but she understood in this moment that there was still a long road ahead of them; still a million songs left to play).

"Where are we?" she asked him.

"Does it matter? There's always a sunrise or a sunset somewhere in the world," Apollo said lazily. "I thought you might enjoy either. You don't typically get to see it where you are."

Rhea supposed that was true. She just wished her friends could be here as well. She thought it might perhaps cheer all of them up, considering the day they had.

"Thank you," she said, "for saving us."

It felt inadequate--she had such little to offer him in return, but it was all she could give. Rhea had never been good with words, and she always ruined things when she said them out loud. Still, she thought it was important to make an effort, and Apollo hadn't needed to help her. Most gods wouldn't have.

But he did. That was something at the very least.

"No thanks necessary. I would have been extremely upset if you'd died," Apollo said loftily. Despite his tone, when she looked over at him, his eyes were hard, dark, and possessive.

Rhea wasn't ignorant to what Apollo truly was, and there was evidence to show that Apollo always cared to a dangerously passionate level. He was a god who loved violently with his entire heart when he found something worth his time, and Rhea honestly feared what would happen to the world if she was no longer in it.

(Sometimes, when she looked at him, his smile looked like a massacre. Centuries ago, Apollo had cursed Cassandra because she'd refused to love him, and that love he thought he'd owned condemned thousands of people to their deaths.

That was Cassandra's legacy--what would be hers? Rhea didn't want to know what he could do in her name.)

Around them, the sky was a burnt edge of orange and scarlet, but whether it was dawn or dusk, Rhea couldn't tell. It was hard to understand everything that happened in a dreamscape; hard to cut into the important bits and read between the lines. Apollo's inclusion into it all always made it doubly hard, because it was difficult to look at him and not want to do something nice for him, even when his past was dipped in blood up to his elbows. Suddenly, Rhea understood her dad's worries a bit more clearer.

"The glitter in your hair," he said suddenly, coaxing her out of her morbid thoughts, "it's pretty. The work of one of Aphrodite's daughters?"

"Yes. Silena," Rhea confirmed. Thinking about children, though, made Rhea think about all of the ones who would soon die by the end of this quest. Castor. Lee Fletcher. Maybe even others that the Fates refused to show her, those the Fates didn't deem it necessary to try to save. Sometimes, they were cruel. The universe was a harsh mistress, and Rhea sometimes felt like a mere cog in the machine.

She could try to fix things, but it would only ever be within the space of what the Fates gave her. Rhea couldn't work miracles. She wasn't a god.

(Not that the gods worked miracles often. The Greeks were known for their tragedies after all.)

"You have a very nice voice," she told Apollo, trying to get rid of her depressing thoughts. Of course it would be, with him being the god of music! and all that--but it wasn't the perfect pitch or the brilliant timbre she liked the best, because more than anything, his voice made her feel safe.